A Clinical Research Coordinator (CRC) assists the Principal Investigator (PI) by managing and coordinating clinical trial activities across three phases: pre-trial preparations, trial conduct, and post-trial closure. Key responsibilities include collecting necessary documentation, obtaining informed consent, entering data, maintaining trial records, and ensuring compliance with ethical standards. The increasing demand for CRCs is highlighted, particularly in the context of growing clinical research opportunities.

1. Role & Responsibilities Of A Clinical Research Coordinator
Clinical Research Coordinator (CRC) is a specialized research person working with and under the
direction of the Principal Investigator .While the Principal Investigator(PI) is primarily responsible
for the overall designing, conducting, and management of the clinical trial, the CRC supports, and
coordinates the regular clinical trial activities and plays a crucial role in the conduct of the study.
By doing these duties, the CRC works with the PI, sponsor ,department, and institution to support
and provide guidance on every related aspects of the study.
Every clinical research project may have one or more study coordinators depending on the
workload at the trial site. Clinical trials at site level can be roughly divided into 3 stages. The three
stages and the role of the coordinators at these stages are:
1) Before starting the clinical trial
2) During the conduct of the clinical trial
3) After finishing the clinical trial
1) Before starting the clinical trial:
➢ the coordinator collects and completes the questions received form different Clinical
Research Organizations and Sponsors.
➢ They have to collect required information from the PI, and send it back to the respective
people who contacted the site regarding the study.
In many processes a clinical study coordinator plays a vital role:
➢ The CROs after selecting clinical trial sites does Investigator meetings, which are attended
by the study coordinator along with the principal or co-investigator. Before start of the trial
CRC’s are busy with submitting all study documents to the ethics committee.
➢ Documents to be submitted to the ethics committee includes the study protocol, investigator
brochure and informed consent forms with translation certificates.
After obtaining consent from the ethics committee the clinical trial can be initiated at the site
level.
2) During conducting of clinical trial:
➢ During the screening time, the coordinator has to obtain informed consent from the subject .
The coordinators have to collect subjects previous medical history and according to study
protocol he/she has to conduct their scheduled visits.
➢ After completion of all visit procedures the coordinators enter data in the case report forms
(CRF). CRF’s are two types, one is paper CRF and another one is eCRF. During a
monitoring visit the CRA’s also verify EC notifications and Investigator Site Files (ISF). To
keep updated documents is the duty of the CRC. Study coordinator also has to maintain EC
soaps, site SOP’s and EC members list.

2. ➢ When the subjects come for next schedule visit, study drug accountability has to be
calculated by CRC. Along with that patient diaries have to be reviewed if applicable. IVRS
(Interactive voice response system) and IWRS to record the subject visit have to be
performed as per the study requirement. IVRS reports have to be maintained in the ISF’s.
Investigational product is the major part in clinical trial and study coordinators have to store
the same in a proper condition and maintain required temperature logs.
➢ In report of any adverse events or serious adverse events that occurred at the trial site,
coordinators have to collect all necessary information such as start date, stop date, severity,
concomitant medications taken by the subject and the way of administration. Also
information related to any challenges, therapy provided to the subject during the SAE, the
recovery details and whether it is related to study drug or not have to be collected.
➢ Throughout the clinical trial the study coordinators have to check all Central lab reports and
take PI signatures on them to document that the PI reviewed the lab reports.
➢ They are also responsible for giving telephonic reminders to the subjects regarding the
visits. If the CRC does the data entry then it is the study coordinators responsibility to solve
all queries within 48 hours or as per time line given by the sponsor. Queries are of three
types; system generated queries, data management generated queries and CRA generated
queries.
3) After Close out of clinical trial:
Before a clinical research trial is closed at the site, study coordinators have to validate all
documents and all the documents need to be updated. On the final day CRA will verify all
documents. After verification of all documents by the CRA,the CRC will assist in archiving the
documents at site. The site has to maintain all study related records for 15 to 20 years.
With the many ongoing progressive researches in Pune, the demand of a CRC is increasing.
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